CH.6 - A Look At Karma and Its Working

What is Karma?

The Five Natural Laws of Phenomena

Karma is Not a Philosophical Idea

Karma is the Volition that Prompts Us to Act

[This chapter investigates the Law of Karma and seeks to clarify this arcane subject so we can come to understand this force as a tangible, whilst subtle, conditioning aspect of our conscious experience]

What is Karma?

I want us to start to look now at karma, at the law of karma. To try to see into how actually it might be functioning in our lives, so that we can get beyond doubt about what karma is, get beyond the idea that karma is a view that we either subscribe to or do not, to get to the point where we can begin to feel it as a dynamic and active force at work in our lives at all times.

There is much confusion about the law of karma. Some people simply reject the whole idea that our past actions have a capacity to condition what happens to us in the present, and likewise that our present actions have a future effect. Because it is hard to see how the energy of karma is functioning within our lives, it is of course easy to reduce the notion of karma from being one of the strongest conditioning factors within our lives to something akin to a superstitious belief.

In the same way that some refute the whole notion of karma as one of the universal principles governing life, others overreach and fall down on the view that everything in life is an expression of karma. This is also clearly not the case.

When the Buddha was asked about the natural order of the universe and the role that karma plays, he identified the law or way of karma as one of five significant conditioning factors within the overall 'way of things', and if we are going to reach a clear understanding and perspective on how and why the world and everything in it expresses itself the way it does, we need to understand karma within this wider context.

The Five Natural Laws of Phenomena

So the five governing principles which together account for the dynamic display of material and conscious phenomena that we observe in life are as follows:

1. The Law of the elements. This is the natural order of non-living matter. At a micro level it is the dynamic relationship between the four elements of earth, water, fire and air,1 which expresses itself as the climatic conditions, the behaviour of fire, gases, water, soil, rocks and minerals. Most natural disasters such as floods and earthquakes would be governed by this.

Put into modern terms, these natural laws would correlate with what we think of as physics, chemistry, geology, and several sciences of inorganic phenomena. The most important point to understand about the law of the elements is that the matter it governs is not part of the law of karma and is not overridden by karma. Karmic law affects the subtle material sphere and not the gross material sphere. So, from a Buddhist perspective, natural disasters such as earthquakes are not caused by karma.

2. The Law of living (organic) matter. This we might call the natural order of life, growth and decay that we observe in living organic matter. All living matter has an aspect of nutritive essence within it. As part of the expression of life it absorbs nutrition as part of the growth process and discards waste matter. This natural order governs the behaviour of seeds, plants, sprouts and fruits. Again, this is not an expression of karma, but simply an expression of the natural order of things. Plants, for example, do not have a discrete mental continuum, and so their life is not an expression of volition.

3. The Law of karma. All of our volitional thoughts, words and deeds create an energy that brings about effects, and that process is called karma. Karma pertains to the realm of volition. Volition being that which prompts us to act; this is karma.

The important point here is that the law of karma explains the way that volition becomes a conditioning factor for the way things are experienced. It is important that we do not view karma as a cosmic criminal justice system, and no supernatural force or God is directing it to reward the good and punish the wicked. Rather, it is like magnetism or gravity. It functions by discernible laws. One of the ways we can understand karma is by the notion of like attracting like. Those actions rooted in greed or aversion attract unpleasant results in the future when a condition for them arises. Those actions rooted in generosity and kindness attract pleasant results in the future when a condition for them arises.

However, many sicknesses that appear in the gross materiality of the body of organic life do have their causes in the karmic field and the subtle elements produced by karma.2

4. The fourth natural law describes the fundamental truths by which reality becomes manifest. We might think of this as The natural spiritual law. (The Law of Dharma). In particular it describes the truth that ‘all conditioned things are impermanent’. Also all things are inherently empty and arise only dependent upon conditions and nothing spontaneously arises without a condition for it doing so (Dependent Origination).

5. The final natural law describes the way that consciousness functions, and governs the conscious aspect of reality and the process by which we become aware of our experience. Consciousness, feeling, perception and thought processes are governed by this natural law. It explains consciousness to be a discrete process that behaves according to predictable laws. No one person’s mind behaves by different natural laws to another's.

Reaching an experiential understanding of how these five principles interconnect takes a deep and mature capacity for insight that develops through the practice of meditation, which observes the momentary arising and passing away of both material and mental phenomena and their causes. This is the practice we call Vipassana meditation.

At a superficial level we practice Vipassana observing the three marks of conditioned existence covered by the fourth law, above (The Law of Dharma). These three marks the Buddha called Anicca (impermanence), Anatta (no self) and Dukkha, the process by which we find our experience to be suffering or unsatisfactory. At a deeper level we investigate the process and functioning of all five of these natural laws so that we can reach a profound understanding of the law of causality or what the Buddha called Dependent Origination.

It may take a lifetime of meditative practice to develop a clear comprehension of the dynamic intelligence behind life and the universe, but the point is that whether we can understand it or not, there are universal laws at work in the background of our lives that condition our experience of it at the deepest level.

Of these, karma is one of the deepest and most profound conditioning factors governing life, and the failure to recognise the way in which it functions and the influence that it has upon life is one of the greatest causes of the misery that beings bring themselves to and of the suffering that we encounter.

Karma is Not a Philosophical Idea

The tendency to reduce karma to a philosophical idea which we might either subscribe to or reject has meant that it is one of the most contentious of all spiritual principles. Until we look deeply enough into the energetic processes by which life expresses itself to see it as a dynamic conditioning force within life, we may be prompted simply to reject the notion of it as a violation of our basic sense of entitlement to express ourselves freely in any way that we wish.

The idea that our activities, both within the material world and within the inner world of our mind, deeply condition us to the point where past actions condition present and future events, is quite possibly the most challenging of principles for anyone who galvanises their life around the pursuit of their desires and the fulfilment of those desires in the least inconvenient and most expedite way.

The Buddha himself was quite clear. Our failing to understand the functioning of karma and the rejection of it as a fundamental principle of life is one of the main reasons that beings wander for so long in an unnecessary round of suffering. The process of freeing ourselves from suffering is the gradual exhausting of the karmic potential within each of us to come to renewed, suffering existence.

It is on account of not understanding suffering and its causes, and not understanding what it is that brings suffering about, that we organise ourselves in such a way that suffering proliferates rather than diminishes. So far our human efforts to reduce suffering amount to our attempt to bend the world to our will, but we have not yet got very far towards creating a world in which suffering is not an ever-present factor in life.

For when we come to understand the real nature of things and how karma functions as a reflection of the basic creative process that underpins life, then we gradually come to understand the effect that our actions of body, speech and mind have upon ourselves and others.

As our insight matures we start to experience more directly the powerful conditioning factors behind our lives. With this understanding, our inclination to seek to cut off at the root and free ourselves from those things that are the cause of suffering becomes greatly increased.

The Buddha always was very clear that it is actually only ignorance - not understanding - that is the reason that we come to so much suffering. Jesus was also clear about this. He realised it in his dying moments when he looked out upon those who had betrayed him and persecuted him. Five minutes before he died he was in a state of despair thinking that something was fundamentally wrong, and that God had forsaken him. But in his last moments before his death his insight matured, with understanding that it was all just ignorance and not greed and hatred that was the cause of suffering.

As he saw the confusion in those who had betrayed him and persecuted him, he let go the feeling of despair which only moments before had overwhelmed him with the feeling of being forsaken and let down. With his dying words he was able to free himself with the proclamation ‘Forgive them, for they know not what they do’.

Sooner or later each of us must start to make a reflection upon what the effect is upon us of the things that we choose to do. How might my actions of body, speech and mind, in the past and in the present, be conditioning the experience I am having, both now and in the future?

Karma is the Volition that Prompts Us to Act

Karma is the volition that prompts us to act. It is that volition that prompts us to act in the moment that impresses upon our unconscious in such a way that it subsequently becomes a conditioning factor in the future for what we experience and how we meet those future experiences.

Although it is extremely hard to fully understand the complete workings and the dynamic nature by which karma expresses itself in life, it is not hard for us at least to start to glimpse the sure fact that the way in which I react to what happens now, and the actions that are prompted in response to these reactions, impacts upon me in such a way that I become conditioned by it in the future.

This is the most fundamental way that we can come to understand karma. I am angry by nature now, I am angry and resentful of things that happen. The more intense, the more strongly, the more habitually this anger and resentment arises in my mind now, the more it is accumulated as an impression in my unconscious and in my memory, and the more it is prone to condition my capacity to meet my experiences in the future. This is not hard to understand.

So likewise, our past accumulation of wholesome and unwholesome mental states (like greed or generosity, ill-will or kindness) conditions our capacity to meet the pleasant and enjoy and appreciate it, and conditions our ability to meet the unpleasant and forbear and tolerate it in the present.

An accumulation of unwholesome states of aversion and craving in the past conditions our ability to meet the present experience in the moment to the point where we may not be able to enjoy it or even to appreciate it because our mind is so heavily smothered by craving or aversion.

A mind that is heavily conditioned in the past by aversion, by intolerance, by anger and ill-will, by craving for this and that, when it meets the unpleasant may become so intensely disturbed by that challenging experience that it has no capacity to be with it with equanimity. And without fail a renewal of mental states of aversion arise within the mind, perpetuating and multiplying and rolling on the causal chain of suffering that is rooted in aversion or greed.

So the arising of unwholesome mental states in the past and in the present is conditioning how we will meet those experiences that come to us in the future. If our mind is too destabilised or too overwhelmed by anger, aversion and ill-will, by craving, attachment and greed, we find so little ground that we can land upon in the present moment that feels satisfying, rewarding or the ground for happiness within us.

And so we see that there is a very poor correlation between the experience of pleasurable things and how happy we actually are. Of course, to experience pleasurable things we are more likely to be happy than if we are consistently experiencing displeasurable things. But unless the mind is wholesome by nature, our ability to meet with the pleasant and find pleasure and happiness in it is hugely diminished.

There are plenty of extremely fortunate people on this planet who are deeply miserable, and many, far less fortunate who have found peace, joy and contentment in their lives.

So this is the first way that we should start to reflect upon karma and make the effort in the moment to pay attention with mindfulness to the way that we do react to the pleasurable with craving, attachment and grasping, and the way that we do react to the unpleasant with aversion, rejection, anger or ill-will, or intolerance. The first step in cutting the habitual renewal of the cycle of suffering is to pay attention to how we are reacting to what is happening now, regardless of whether we can yet feel how those reactions are conditioned by how we have reacted in the past.

Now all of this will be quite familiar to you if you have spent any time meditating or have done retreats previously. This is not difficult to understand. But perhaps what is just as important but less easy to understand is how much good fortune it actually takes to produce a human life that is even relatively free from suffering.

Some of us are extremely fortunate and are not struggling to provide for ourselves the basic requisites that support this life. Others find it much more difficult. This is a reflection of past karma supporting our present experience. It is the past accumulation of merit (wholesome deeds) that provides the ground for the support for this life. This is one kind of karma, the karma that fruited to support the conditions for your life. There are many factors conditioning this.

Most of us, I dare say, are very fortunate human beings, rare amongst humans in our good fortune. So our lives are well provided for. This means there is a stock of supporting karma. One way to reflect upon it is that when life is going well for us it is because our deposit or investment account of good fortune is relatively good, and this will always be because of a past accumulation of merit and wholesome deeds.

But what we may have failed to recognise is how much of that deposit account of good fortune we require to use in the moment, in our ordinary day-to-day life, just to reach a stage where we are even moderately content or happy. In short, far from being of few needs, although fortunate, we are of many needs.

Now it is one thing to have a large and well provided-for deposit account of merit in support of this very life, but it does not matter how large that deposit account is, if it is taking a huge amount of resource to bring you any sense of satisfaction in this life now, you are drawing on your deposit account at an unsustainable level.

The real danger comes when you have become so used to needing so much in order to be happy that you go through life without investing in the deposit account to the extent that would mean you might expect your good fortune to continue. When you get to the point where that deposit account is used up and you need so many things to make you feel that life is meaningful, or to feel content or satisfied, what misery will you experience when that ground is no longer supported because you have spent your entire deposit account without reinvesting?

This is the very crossroads we have reached as humanity. Most of the history of humanity is the history of beings seeking opportunities to use their good fortune and express it, but with only occasional examples of beings turning their lives to investing in their spiritual or worldly well-being in the future. In fact at the very time when we experience enough comfort and ease in our lives to turn our attention to service and making merit, we have allowed our needs to continue to rise along with our good fortune, so that our rates of consumption (both material and karmic) have increased alarmingly from one generation to the next.

It is for this reason that the Buddha said that he who is of few needs and easy to provide for is the closest to being happy. He who is of many needs and consumes much in the pursuit of those needs is so far from really being happy.

It is so important that we start to reflect upon this, because we, as human beings in this time, in the world that we are living in, have come to the conclusion that the basic needs that are necessary to support our lives are so many and so elaborate that we have developed such a sense of entitlement whereby what could have supported us as a group for countless lifetimes, or certainly many lifetimes, will barely support us for a single lifetime.

And the point at which a being transitions from that point where merit is supporting their life and good karma is fruiting for them, to the point where there is a lack of merit supporting the life and unwholesome karma is supporting them, that is a catastrophic transition that is very hard to bear. It is the transition from these two states, one to another, that brings the most unbearable amount of suffering.

So take stock now. This is the most important reflection that we in our time could be making. There is no reflection that could be more important than this. To what degree are we drawing on our deposit account of good fortune, or simply taking for granted that we will always experience such good fortune, in order to provide what we feel are the basic needs for our happiness? How long can we assume that we can draw on that account at that rate?

It’s simple if you look at it like this. He who has £100 in the bank and draws upon that bank £1 a year lives for a hundred years supported by that account. He who has £100 in the bank and draws £10 a year lives for ten years supported by that account. He who has £100 in the bank and draws £50 a year lives only for two years supported by that account. It is not complex mathematics. Why are we not paying attention to the way that we are choosing to conduct ourselves? It is so clear that we are withdrawing karmically far more than we are investing. We are living now a life that stands on the past accumulation of good fortune, but are we sowing the kinds of seeds that will fruit as our good fortune in the future?

When you come to understand karma you understand that you are not experiencing now, in this life, the fruiting of much karma that is produced in this life. Only a small amount of the karma that fruits in this life was produced in this life. Almost all of the karma that fruits in this life was produced in a previous time and most of the karma you produce in this life will fruit in the future.

In effect both Jesus and the Buddha were trying to tell us the same thing. None of what we materially acquire here will follow us on when we die, the only thing that does is the merit or lack of it with which we have pursued our lives. Jesus was not refuting the fact that past actions condition our future welfare, even if he did not explain the mechanism by which this functions in this life and beyond it.

So it is on this ground that we make the reflection: there are beings born in light who are moving into light. They are using their good fortune to sow sweet seeds that will fruit with good fortune in the future. There are those beings born in the light who are not moving into the light, because in spite of their good fortune they are drawing upon their investment account without making new investments, and this investment account will surely run dry in time.

So make this reflection on what you perceive your needs to be and whether you perceive them to be greater than they need be, and to what extent you might be able to let go what you do not need or use it for the benefit of others.

Because it is the benefit that your time here brings to others, both now and in times to come, that is your investment in the future. Take heed, because this is a very important time and the way that you meet this challenge in this life will determine how we fare from here. This is the most important lesson, the most important reflection we could make in this lifetime now. And it will determine our welfare in the future.

We may however choose to hold the view that life simply comes to an end with our final breath, but even if we do hold that view we cannot hide from the fact that the life we lead will be the basis for what we leave for those to come. Or we might simply hope for a life better than the one we have now. We might even aspire to a higher than human life, like the heavenly life Jesus implores us to aspire to. A higher than human life requires a higher than ordinary consciousness and that would always be rooted in virtue, kindness and love.

It is all too easy to say that the demise of religion in recent generations is merely the result of our feeling of being let down by the institutions that surround them. But it is not just religion that has declined in our lives, but the presence of a spiritual context of any kind. Of course, in our complacency it is all too easy to point the finger of blame somewhere beyond us. But might we make the reflection that the real reason we have embraced a materialist view of the world and rejected religion, faith and even to a large degree any kind of spiritual context to our lives is because, feeling unable or unwilling to uphold the values that such beliefs ask of us, it is far more convenient to let them fade from the radar?

The Buddha said that the most pernicious of views is the one that assumes that life is just a biological process and rejects the notion that consciousness is the ground for it. Subscribing to such a view that consciousness comes to cessation with our final breath might allow us to feel absolved from all accountability and responsibility for our actions in life.

It may well be convenient to assume that our actions have no consequences, and that the selfish pursuit of our desires and lust goes unnoticed, but let us understand two things. Firstly, nothing goes unnoticed by our deeper unconscious mind, and even though we might be able to pretend we do not feel the way we do, we are constantly conditioned by what is going on within us, even if at an unconscious level.

We can pretend to ourselves that we are happy because we do not like the idea of being unhappy, but we still have to place our head on the pillow at night and be with ourselves. How do you actually feel when you know that you have deceived or cheated someone else, or taken more than is reasonable, in that moment when you get to sit quietly on your own and enjoy the fruits of your labour?

And secondly, if your mind is not peaceful, happy and content now, if you are not kind and generous by nature now, what makes you think that you are suddenly going to become happy and contented, kind and generous in the future, or in another life after this, in a time beyond this? What would make us think that things would so suddenly change if we are currently self-concerned, self-absorbed, selfish, intolerant, impatient, angry, judgemental, jealous, arrogant – what would make us think that we would suddenly change from such a state to a one where we are not like this?

This is how we should start to reflect upon the law of karma. We know that sweet seeds sown bring sweet fruit, and bitter seeds sown do not bring sweet fruit. The seed of a lemon does not, cannot bring forth a sweet fruit. It is not its nature. And when no seeds are sown, no fruit is brought forth at all. You have to choose for yourself whether you are seeking to remove yourself in stages from this cycle of conditioned becoming by bringing to an end this web of karma that is expressing itself through you and through your life, or whether you are simply hoping to improve your good fortune and hoping to find peace, or more peace and happiness in the future than you know now.

There is no real sign of the merit that it takes to produce a life like this when we pull it apart and investigate it physically. While there are some scientists who claim to have proved that there is no underlying intelligence behind our lives and that it is just a biological process, others are starting to glimpse a deeper intelligence at work, having to acknowledge that it is, as yet, profoundly mysterious and hard to fathom. But even if you are unable to see for yourselves how this life is functioning, we can all at least reflect that it is extraordinarily rare and precious.

The Buddha suggests that it takes tremendous merit and tremendous good fortune to come to such a life as this. Jesus suggests that it will take tremendous merit, kindness and generosity to come to a fortunate life after this. We can all reflect upon how we are using this life, and reflect upon the seeds that we are sowing for our future. We can all try to find in our heart the humility to acknowledge that we may not yet understand, and in doing so, instead of seeking to remove the mystery from life, look to our hearts instead of our heads to discover the kind of generosity, kindness and compassion that might connect us to those around us and gradually end any feeling of isolation we may be feeling.

Neither the Buddha nor Jesus nor any of the great teachers of the past wished to alarm us with what they shared. They were simply asking us to look deeply into the nature of our lives and make intelligent reflections and informed decisions about what would be an appropriate way to live in order to safeguard not just our future but the future of those to come. And it is in our hands that these things lie.

It is worth reflecting upon the qualities that do make us truly human, like simple kindness, generosity, compassion and gratitude, and seek to bring them to the centre stage rather than allow them to become smothered by the pursuit of our ideas or desires. There are many ways that we might seek to mature and not diminish these qualities, and continue to invest in that life account that is the real support to our lives. At every level, surely this is a wholly more positive approach than to blindly hope that things will go our way, or simply seek to make them do so.

For in the final analysis it is so important to understand that however powerful and strong an influence upon our lives the will of man may be, the law of karma and the law of nature are infinitely more powerful and they will ultimately always hold sway over the will of man.

1 For a detailed explanation of the Four Elements of materiality please see Flavour of Liberation Vol 1, Part 2.

2For a detailed look at this please see Flavour of Liberation Vol.1, chapters 18 - 28 on the subtle body.